hurry." They looked round and
saw that it proceeded from the pretty nose of a young American girl, who
sat with a party of young American girls at a neighboring table. Then
they perceived that all the people in that restaurant were Americans,
mostly young girls, who all looked as if they were in a hurry. But
neither their beauty nor their impatience had the least effect with
the waiter, who prolonged the dinner at his pleasure, and alarmed the
Marches with the misgiving that they should not have time for the final
palace on their list.

This was the palace where the father of Frederick, the mad old Frederick
William, brought up his children with that severity which Solomon urged
but probably did not practise. It is a vast place, but they had time for
it all, though the custodian made the most of them as the latest comers
of the day, and led them through it with a prolixity as great as their
waiter's. He was a most friendly custodian, and when he found that they
had some little notion of what they wanted to see, he mixed zeal with
his patronage, and in a manner made them his honored guests. They saw
everything but the doorway where the faithful royal father used to lie
in wait for his children and beat them, princes and princesses alike,
with his knobby cane as they came through. They might have seen
this doorway without knowing it; but from the window overlooking the
parade-ground where his family watched the manoeuvres of his gigantic
grenadiers, they made sure of just such puddles as Frederick William
forced his family to sit with their feet in, while they dined alfresco
on pork and cabbage; and they visited the room of the Smoking Parliament
where he ruled his convives with a rod of iron, and made them the
victims of his bad jokes. The measuring-board against which he took
the stature of his tall grenadiers is there, and one room is devoted to
those masterpieces which he used to paint in the agonies of gout. His
chef d'oeuvre contains a figure with two left feet, and there seemed
no reason why it might not have had three. In another room is a small
statue of Carlyle, who did so much to rehabilitate the house which the
daughter of it, Wilhelmina, did so much to demolish in the regard of
men.

The palace is now mostly kept for guests, and there is a chamber where
Napoleon slept, which is not likely to be occupied soon by any other
self-invited guest of his nation. It is perhaps to keep the princes
of Europe humble th